


he and i, and all the world

by Askance



Category: The Sisters Brothers (2018)
Genre: Diary/Journal, Domestic, Fluff, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-07 01:30:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18862981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance
Summary: "This is not to say our world is perfect—only that we are striving toward it. There are certain hurdles of man and nature that are yet to be overcome. Nonetheless my world, for what it is worth, and for what it encompasses—Hermann and our homestead—is as close to perfect as I can fathom."





	he and i, and all the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [octopifer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/octopifer/gifts).



April 1853

I am moved to record our day in more detail than usual, not because it was in any way extraordinary, but because it was in its essentials as unextraordinary as it comes to us in Dallas. I told Hermann this and he encouraged me to write what I saw fit—lovely _,_ he said, to have a record of ordinary pleasantry. Modern of me, also. He is engrossed in a text on the native flora of the Great Plains as I write this, lying next to me with the quilt up below his chin. It is nearly full-dark, and as it is almost summer I can hear the cicadas singing out beyond the pasture.

              Every day we spend together is more or less as enjoyable as the last, dampered only by occasional illness or foul weather, or elevated slightly by a remarkable sunrise, or one of his brilliant smiles. I can no longer remember the last time I was unhappy.

              He would blush to hear it (as I blush to say it)—but not a moment of this new and gentler life with him has left me wanting—how lucky I am, in all things.

              I have just paused to ask him what he thinks of the day we have spent together. The deep contentment of our day-to-day, he says, is peaceful and long-lasting; anything more would be mythical.  In other words, a very fine time, he says. He has pressed up against me so as to better lay out his book on his lap.

              We wake, typically, before sunrise. I am always first out of bed, as I was this morning; waking Hermann is as much a daily chore as is feeding the chickens and weeding the garden. Eventually, he realizes I am no longer in bed with him, and will extricate himself from the quilt with a great deal of difficulty and mumbling and a number of head-shaking yawns. (Our bed, as I do not believe I have mentioned before, is quite small, but just big enough for the both of us, if we pack in tightly. The quilt we sleep under was our first project upon finishing our house, and is ugly as sin, but will do for cold nights. We have another, a gift from the neighboring homestead two miles away, that is much prettier. It rests at the foot of the bed to warm our toes as we sleep. Hermann is in the process of patching another together and is forever asking the man at the general store what new fabrics he has in.)

              There was nothing too much doing on our little plot today. We washed our faces and brushed our teeth at the basin and Hermann, as he always does, went out in his shirtsleeves to feed the chickens and gather eggs for breakfast. I like to see him all the time, but particularly in the very early morning, with his suspenders loose at his hips and his sleeves rolled up, half-inside by the coop, reaching past the clucking birds to feel for their eggs. They circle him with benign curiosity. By the time I had gone down the steps to see to the cow he was sitting in the dust and grass, tossing handfuls of feed, still waking up, watching the bobbing heads and scratching feet.

              Our little lean-to stable is a dark and quiet place, just large enough for our horses and our cow, all mild and even-tempered animals. It is a good place in which to sit and think and wait for the sun to rise.

              All of this was ordinary today. The cow milked, the eggs fetched, the sheep seen to. Hermann had coffee brewing when I returned to the house. It was a blue sunrise, and for a while we feared an early rain, but the clouds broke up as we were eating—cornbread and eggs and coffee and milk—and the sun, weary-white but strong, peered above the horizon, spreading out its light through the grass and the fence-posts.

              As we had not a lot of work to do, and had been to town earlier in the week for essentials, and were in need of an idle day at any event, we agreed that it would be a fine thing to ride to the river and try to catch some fish for supper. This is a joy of our community—we are responsible for our fields and animals, for our health and wellbeing, and yet we are able to carve out hours and days for rest and rejuvenation when the work is done. If we are ever in need, we may turn to our neighbor; if they are ever in need, they may turn to us. Any surplus we may have returns to those around us. We are each of us beholden to one another and to our own talents. This is not to say our world is perfect—only that we are striving toward it. There are certain hurdles of man and nature that are yet to be overcome. Nonetheless my world, for what it is worth, and for what it encompasses—Hermann and our homestead—is as close to perfect as I can fathom.

              In a basket we packed away some bread and cheese and eggs and flasks of water in the event that we were peckish, and set out. It is a ride of an hour at least to the river, but we have found a particular shady, shallow spot where perch and carp tend to gather. It is an excellent spot to wile away an afternoon and we are frequent visitors. As far as we can tell, no one else makes use of it.

              Hermann also brought along his notebook and my old copy of Thoreau, which he has now read several times over. He tells me that he is continually finding new things in it to dwell upon, and that he should like to emulate the man’s style someday in describing the landscape we live in. Spring is a delight to him; every cluster of wildflowers provokes his joy, and his joy is infectious. We have pressed and preserved a large number of _Lupinus texensis_ and _Castilleja_ , and bunches of them hang dried and upside-down above our mantel-piece. He loves the brightening world. He is forever making note of butterflies and ants and the first songs of the birds in our trees. We have learned that I am a steadier hand than he, and often he will ask me to sketch this or that—a leaf, a petal, the wing of an insect. We have spent evenings debating the meanings of color in nature or the effects of late frost. Today he was on the hunt for some specimens of a purple flower we have seen along the side of the trails to and from town.

              It was growing hot by the time we reached the river and our shady spot, and we were glad of the trees. We had brought our old tablecloth and we spread it out beneath the live oaks and he went about picking in the mud for worms for our hooks, and in the warmest shallows for minnows.

              It is the peace of our existence for which I am most thankful, and perhaps the desire to capture it is what compels me to describe our day. Heaven forbid we ever lose hold of it; I do not think we will, but we remain cautious. We wind the memories of days like this one around our fingers as if we plan to weave them into cloth to wear, or make thread of it with which to sew Hermann’s new quilt. Such a different existence from that we led in California—I doubt it will ever cease to feel tremulous to me. But I hope that we have earned our good now, and that nothing will come along to disrupt it. I would like very much to die someday in our little house at an old and contented age, with Hermann alongside, having been happy with him.

              Hermann, darling to me as he is, talks so much and so often and at such length that it would be an impossible task to describe all our conversations, even if I would like to. In angling, he is quieter, knowing that stillness will attract the fish, but to stand beside him in the shallows with our feet bare and our trousers rolled up is to feel the barely-contained electricity of all his buzzing thoughts waiting patiently to burst forth again. They are comforting to me, his cycles of talk and silence—I know that I can always rely on them.

              How to describe the peace of our little sojourn—how to properly describe the high sun, more golden then, beating down on us through the shifting leaves above; the green stillness of the water in which we stood with our makeshift rods and our dangling lines; the floating algae, soft and slimy, that occasionally drifted past our bare legs. Mosquitoes danced at our calves, landing every now and then to bite, and we leaned down to slap them away with the mechanical efficiency of a horse’s flicking tail, leaving little smears of blood on our skin. Bubbles rose and popped on the surface of the water. Hermann, standing more in the sun than I, was dappled in its light, shadows dancing pleasantly across his dark face. He is wonderful to look at. I find him, always, the loveliest thing in a room. He has little regard for his own appearance, telling me that if he were a little taller, stronger, fuller in the body, like me, he might like himself better—I tell him not to be foolish and that I love him precisely as he is, and he is kind enough not to argue if he doubts me. Secretly I believe he is pleased when I flatter him. All the better, for I enjoy flattering him. But I am meandering. Hermann, when he chances to read my journal, tells me that what I lack in rambling speech I more than make up for in rambling writing. We complement each other in this way, I think.

              Without luck at first, we took the time to eat, leaning back against a tree with our legs straight out in front of us, the buttons in our shirts undone. I reached for his hand, as I am wont to do, and he took it, as he always does, and his thumb caressed my skin, back and forth, while he ate a heel of bread, his eyes wandering across the river. His right leg was draped carelessly over mine. I was not too hungry, and leaned my head back against the tree and closed my eyes, finding a crook in its roots for my shoulders. Still he held my hand, feeling blindly in his satchel for Thoreau, and we rested a while, our poles upright in the mud and our lines still dangling.

I listened to the wind, to the turning of his pages. Every now and then he hummed a snatch of an unfamiliar tune, or whispered the words aloud, contemplatively, to himself. I might have dozed off, as the touch of his hand was soothing and the weight of his leg was heavy, and the heat made me drowsy. The redness of my closed eyes was turned blue or black, sometimes, when a cloud passed in front of the sun. Crickets sang. I breathed deeply, and so did he.

              “John,” he said at some point, squeezing my hand gently to rouse me, “it is getting hot.”

              He had set aside Thoreau and was sitting quietly with me. In the water our lines had not moved; I thought that perhaps we had started too late. But we had plenty of food left in our basket, and still plenty of day left ahead of us.

              “Let’s go in,” he said, finally untwining our fingers. “If you like?”

              I agreed—the moving water beyond our shallows seemed cool and inviting. As there was no one to spy, and no sign of another living thing within miles, we stripped off and hung our clothes over the low-hanging branches, wading through the mud and algae to the deeper part of the stream, where it flowed past our waists and almost to our chests.

              We are naked together often enough, and yet I still find a certain distinct pleasure in the initial moments of it, when he is first exposed to the light. I like his nakedness best in the outdoors, when there is only air between us, and not even the confines of blankets and linens to prevent our touching.

              We floated a while in the river, circling always back to one another, reaching out to feel each other’s bodies in the gentle darkness below us. We took it in turns to duck beneath the water and wet our hot faces, holding one another’s hips as anchor points. I felt his dark hair billowing against my belly as he came up for air. We were alone, utterly, and so he was not shy in kissing me, tasting of his own sweat. It is a little joke of ours that we always ask permission before we lean in to press our lips to one another’s—it is a habit I was never able to shake, even after these last long years, and he has picked it up himself, saying it teasing and fond. _May I kiss you, John?_ he says, with earnesty, looking up at me from beneath his serious dark brows. The day I deny him will be the day I die.

              He has just said to me that I am getting carried away; he has closed his book and is resting on my shoulder, reading what I am writing. Hello, sweet. Don’t laugh!

              We spent a while cooling off in the water until a sudden chill wind came upon us from upstream, and we realized that the sky had slowly grown white and crowded with clouds. Still hot, it put me in mind of the riotous weather we endured last spring, and we climbed reluctantly out of the water and back into our underthings, wonderfully warm on our skin from resting in the sun. Our horses, content to graze beyond the trees, were paying the new wind some mind. We resolved to wait a while, to see whether the cooler air might attract our elusive prey to our lines.

              We were successful, in the end, in catching two yellowish pirate perch and a solitary walleye, more than enough for supper, provided we could make it home in time before the storm broke—and there was a storm approaching, in towering masses of purplish clouds on the horizon, moving steadily in our direction. I revel in this weather, but Hermann does not—hail, in particular, puts him on edge, as it makes him fear for our animals. Such is the springtime in Texas.

              We made for home as quickly as we could, but not quickly enough. The rain broke over us just as our fence-posts appeared in the distance, and though we rode hard through the sudden onslaught we trotted in through the gate soaked to the bone. Water poured from the brim of Hermann’s hat like a veil. We made a ridiculous sight, I am sure, splashing through the mud to batten down the chicken coop, hurrying our horses in under the stable roof, herding the sheep into the shed before it began to hail. When a storm is building, it rises, like an anvil, dark and foreboding, bearing down like some giant and wrathful celestial being, but once it is overhead the sky becomes uniform in color, low and flat, as if the release of the rain has leached all menace from it. There was no tell-tale green in the atmosphere to warn of anything worse than ice and thunder, and so we retreated to the breezeway of our house just as the first hailstones began to fall from the sky.

               The smell of pounding rain, churning up the mud and battering the hot grass, and the percussive booming thunder and the streaks of purple lightning—I find them beautiful, and am content to stand and watch them, provided I am safely sheltered. Hermann, though he dislikes such things, hovered a step behind me, further under the humid grey shade of the roof, near at my shoulder. We watched for a while, dripping onto the wooden walk, catching our breath.

              We returned our uneaten food and our fish to the icebox and went across the breezeway once more into our right-hand room, conscious still of the pounding rain and the sound of thunder. Hermann was shivering—he grows cold easily—and I sat him on the edge of our copper tub to undress him, smoothing wet hair out of his eyes. He toyed occasionally with my neckerchief, eventually untying it and sliding it off, dropping it into the tub. We will scrub our things clean tomorrow; we wanted then only to be warm and dry.

              He has interrupted me again to ask if I am really going to write all this. I have asked him if he would prefer I not. Go on, he says, I’m curious. Do you usually write these things down in detail? I have told him no, but that I should like to today, at least. Every part of it was pleasant to me, even the wet clothes, and his shivering. I have asked if he would like me to turn down the lamp and finish tomorrow but he insists I go on. I have a feeling he will fall asleep on my shoulder if I am not quick.

              When he was undressed, he took his turn with me, taking off my clothes and standing close for my warmth, and asked if I would like to go to bed, in a soft and unhurried voice. I saw no reason not to. It was not yet six o’clock, and the storm still raged outside. The light was dim and strange but I find him lovely in every light. He eased me down onto our bed, leaned down over me, kissed me sweetly, his fingers in my wet hair, his thumb against my cheek. The storm surged and retreated, and the air in our little room was clammy and chill, but his heat and his nearness were more than enough for me—are always enough—a comfort all the time. How tenderly he treats me—I am astonished by it continually, thankful for it always—as if no other thought exists in the world for him but to lift my heart and kiss my mouth. I gathered him to me. His skin was cool and damp, his body heavy. I love his generosity of touch. I told him so, and then plainly that I loved him. He smiled and said the same to me, and my name afterward—softly, which always makes the heat rise in me. Our day was, as I have said, unextraordinary—just so—and no different, then, in that he made love to me the way he always does, with great care and gentleness, always holding me, my hip, my leg, my hand in his, always murmuring words of praise and affection to raise my blood, finding his rhythm. It is something we are still learning, and will be learning all the time, I imagine—but we take it all in stride, we laugh at our mistakes, we kiss when all else fails. I would be a happy man merely to kiss him forever.

When we had finished we lay breathing. His skin was flushed. He stretched out his legs as far as they would go. The soft flesh of his inner thigh rested on mine and I reached down to touch it. The muscles in it trembled; I rested my palm against them. He kissed me once, and then again, and tucked my head beneath his chin, and we listened as the rain moved on, further east, and the weird orange light of the stunted sunset slowly bloomed over us, through the window.

We have been lying here since, more or less, though he got up once to fetch a cloth to clean ourselves with. The door is locked, and the lamp is low. The storm has long since passed, and the night is still outside. Some evenings we remain awake until the small hours, talking of this and that, unable to sleep, pressed close together in our bed. Others we turn in as soon as the moon shows her face. The animals are closed in for the night, and though the gate is unlatched we rarely worry for such things. Now he has dozed off against my shoulder—if he sleeps too long in that position he will have a crick in his neck come morning. I have set it all down as I hoped to. In a month perhaps an even more wonderful day will have passed, and we will have forgotten this one. No matter. It will have happened anyway. To sleep with me now, beside him—lucky that I am, to love him—to the dawn tomorrow.

               

             

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Thoreau, 1841: "It was a true poet’s account of it. He and I, and all the world, went outdoors to breathe the free air and stretch ourselves. For the world is but outdoors..."
> 
> Happy Warm/Morris Day!


End file.
